Yin Ziluo, the prime minister’s youngest daughter, was nicknamed A Luo and known as Little Silver.
When she was fourteen, the knot on her little gold ingot pouch struck Lin Hengyi, the victorious Prince Wei, and set off an extraordinary connection between them. She discovered she could briefly possess servants, once for fifteen minutes, and watch Prince Wei through their eyes.
At the spring flower festival, she possessed a young guard just to get a close look at Prince Wei’s clothes, only to learn that he paid particular attention to her. In Sweetwater Lane, she used the guard to ask him questions and learned that “everything one does is to survive.” Though he was in a position of power, he seemed unusually compassionate…
A fierce succession struggle erupted at court. The First Prince, who divided people into allies and enemies, and Prince Wei, a man of deep cunning, were at odds. Her father, the nonaligned prime minister, was in grave danger.
To protect her family, she became Prince Wei’s puppet, founded the Respect and Protection Society, and used admiration as a pretext to befriend noblewomen and lay plans in secret. With her possession ability, she also spied on him at close range. By knowing herself and her opponent, she gradually wrote a “user manual” for navigating reality and political intrigue.
She was free-spirited and refused to be confined to the women’s quarters. She resented men looking down on women. As power struggles and all sorts of everyday incidents unfolded, she gradually realized she was not the only one who felt this way. Yet in the face of the greater forces at work, everyone was an ant, and women had no choice but to obey men.
Only after standing shoulder to shoulder with him did she gradually understand the dilemma of their era, one that no single person could resolve in a single moment. So she decided to help him and borrow his influence, using the Respect and Protection Society as a starting point to carve out a freer path for women.
This is a story of possession, political intrigue, and personal growth. It is also the story of a young woman who, amid turbulent undercurrents, uses needle and thread to stitch a path forward for herself and others.
(P.S. In this book, possession is temporary control of another person. It does not involve magic or supernatural powers.)
Theme: Many things don’t have to be done well before you start. Once you begin, they’ll naturally get better.
